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Born: January 23, 1897 Died: August 18, 1945Achievements: Passed Indian Civil Services Exam; elected Congress President in 1938 and 1939; formed a new party All India Forward block; organized Azad Hind Fauj to overthrow British Empire from India. Subhas Chandra Bose, affectionately called as Netaji, was one of the most prominent leaders of Indian freedom struggle. Though Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru have garnered much of the credit for successful culmination of Indian freedom struggle, the contribution of Subash Chandra Bose is no less. He has been denied his rightful place in the annals of Indian history. He founded Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) to overthrow British Empire from India and came to acquire legendary status among Indian masses. Subhas Chandra Bose was born on January 23, 1897 in Cuttack, Orissa. His father Janaki Nath Bose was a famous lawyer and his mother Prabhavati Devi was a pious and religious lady. Subhas Chandra Bose was the ninth child among fourteen siblings. Subhas Chandra Bose was a brilliant student right from the childhood. He topped the matriculation examination of Calcutta province and graduated with a First Class in Philosophy from the Scottish Churches College in Calcutta. He was strongly influenced by Swami Vivekananda's teachings and was known for his patriotic zeal as a student. To fulfill his parents wishes he went to England in 1919 to compete for Indian Civil Services. In England he appeared for the Indian Civil Service competitive examination in 1920, and came out fourth in order of merit. However, Subhas Chandra Bose was deeply disturbed by the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, and left his Civil Services apprenticeship midway to return to India in 1921After returning to India Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose came under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi and joined the Indian National Congress. On Gandhiji's instructions, he started working under Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, whom he later acknowledged his political guru. Soon he showed his leadership mettle and gained his way up in the Congress' hierarchy. In 1928 the Motilal Nehru Committee appointed by the Congress declared in favour of Domination Status, but Subhas Chandra Bose along with Jawaharlal Nehru opposed it, and both asserted that they would be satisfied with nothing short of complete independence for India. Subhas also announced the formation of the Independence League. Subhas Chandra Bose was jailed during Civil Disobedience movement in 1930. He was released in 1931 after Gandhi-Irwin pact was signed. He protested against the Gandhi-Irwin pact and opposed the suspension of Civil Disobedience movement specially when Bhagat Singh and his associates were hanged.Subash Chandra Bose was soon arrested again under the infamous Bengal Regulation. After a year he was released on medical grounds and was banished from India to Europe. He took steps to establish centres in different European capitals with a view to promoting politico-cultural contacts between India and Europe. Defying the ban on his entry to India, Subash Chandra Bose returned to India and was again arrested and jailed for a year. After the General Elections of 1937, Congress came to power in seven states and Subash Chandra Bose was released. Shortly afterwards he was elected President of the Haripura Congress Session in 1938. During his term as Congress President, he talked of planning in concrete terms, and set up a National planning Committee in October that year. At the end of his first term, the presidential election to the Tripuri Congress session took place early 1939. Subhas Chandra Bose was re-elected, defeating Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya who had been backed by Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee. Clouds of World War II were on the horizon and he brought a resolution to give the British six months to hand India over to the Indians, failing which there would be a revolt. There was much opposition to his rigid stand, and he resigned from the post of president and formed a progressive group known as the Forward Block.Subhas Chandra Bose now started a mass movement against utilizing Indian resources and men for the great war. There was a tremendous response to his call and he was put under house arrest in Calcutta. In January 1941, Subhas Chandra Bose disappeared from his home in Calcutta and reached Germany via Afghanistan. Working on the maxim that "an enemy's enemy is a friend", he sought cooperation of Germany and Japan against British Empire. In January 1942, he began his regular broadcasts from Radio Berlin, which aroused tremendous enthusiasm in India. In July 1943, he arrived in Singapore from Germany. In Singapore he took over the reins of the Indian Independence Movement in East Asia from Rash Behari Bose and organised the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army) comprising mainly of Indian prisoners of war. He was hailed as Netaji by the Army as well as by the Indian civilian population in East Asia. Azad Hind Fauj proceeded towards India to liberate it from British rule. Enroute it lliberated Andeman and Nicobar Islands. The I.N.A. Head quarters was shifted to Rangoon in January 1944. Azad Hind Fauj crossed the Burma Border, and stood on Indian soil on March 18 ,1944.However, defeat of Japan and Germany in the Second World War forced INA to retreat and it could not achieve its objective. Subhas Chandra Bose was reportedly killed in an air crash over Taipeh, Taiwan (Formosa) on August 18, 1945. Though it is widely believed that he was still alive after the air crash not much information could be found about him.

Is Rabindranath Tagore relevant today? “আজি হতে শতবর্ষ পরে কে তুমি পড়িছ বসি আমার কবিতাখানি কৌতুহল ভরে?”“Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?”- Rabindranath Tagore It is common knowledge that every young Bengali man dabbles with poetry. If I may be permitted, I’d like to add to the cliché. Every young Bengali man dabbles with poetry, discovers to his chagrin that his emotions have been better expressed by a man who died decades before he was born, writes a tribute to the great man, and moves on to become a clerk, engineer, or professor of comparative literature. It is a tragicomic progression precisely because the great man had warned against this sort of mediocrity and predictability. Well, predictably, my life also followed this trajectory. I ‘rediscovered’ Tagore on my own after I had been inoculated with his poems, stories, and music almost since birth. I don’t recall my father enjoying any music as much as the songs of Tagore and my mother seemed to know even the most obscure lyrics in his canon of thousands of songs. Of course, back then, I had no appreciation for either the tunes he composed or the deceptively simple lyrics he wrote. It is a different matter today, though I cannot sing his songs as well as others in my family can. Every Bengali grows up reading Tagore’s Sahaj Path (“Simple Lessions”) as a primer for learning the Bangla language along with Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar’s Barna Parichoy. At the age of six or seven, he or she is exposed to a remarkably lucid thought. (At the outset, I apologize for the audacity of attempting to translate Tagore when I personally belong to the camp which believes he is untranslatable.) নদীর ঘাটের কাছেনৌকো বাঁধা আছে,নাইতে যখন যাই, দেখি সেজলের ঢেউয়ে নাচে…কত রাতের শেষেনৌকো-যে যায় ভেসে;বাবা কেন আপিসে যায়,যায় না নতুন দেশে? Next to the river ghat,A small boat is tied.When I go to swim, I see itDancing in the waves…After the end of many a nightThe boat floats away;Why does baba go to an office,And not to a new country? Of course, though the poem is thought-provoking, our young Bengali pupil is forced to spend more time on memorizing the poem than in putting any thought into what it means. Most Bengali girls learn to either sing songs of Tagore accompanied by the harmonium or to dance in the style he perfected to his songs. I remember my sister and many others used to dance to the following song: “আজ ধানের ক্ষেতে রৌদ্রচায়ায় লুকোচুরি খেলা– লুকোচুরি খেলা”“Today, the sun and shade play hide-and-seek in the paddy fields. They play hide-and-seek” The idiom is indicative of Bengal’s strong agrarian bond, but now when I hum the line I recall a pictorial visualization symbolizing a yearning for this bond by the Partition displaced in Ritwik Ghatak’s multilayered masterpiece, Subarnarekha and a shiver runs down my spine. What would Tagore have said of the vivisection of his beloved Bengal had he lived to see the day? Tagore championed for the unification of Bengal after the first partition by Lord Curzon, but as he notes in Ghare Baire (“The Home and The World) he was keenly aware of the grievances of the mostly-poor Muslim populace in the eastern part of the province. Ghare Baire was made into a film by Satyajit Ray. Tagore’s works have been recreated for the silver-screen by Ray, Tapan Sinha, Tarun Majumdar, and other doyens of Bangla cinema. His influence on the art, poetry, music, and culture of Bengal either directly through his work or indirectly through the institution he founded, Visva Bharati, is unmistakable. At the age of thirteen, I read the first short story that tried to understand how I felt at that time, “Chuti”. It was part of the West Bengal school curriculum at the time, and I’ve read it many times since. I read a translation of it in Hungry Stones – a compilation of short stores translated mostly by CF Andrews, which my father had received in school as an award for academic performance many decades earlier. The power of the story transcends language and I highly recommend reading it for it is indicative of what makes Tagore so endearing: his unmatched ability to find the universal in the specific. Consider the following passage: In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental, nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him is resented. Then he is at the unattractive, growing age. He grows out of his clothes with indecent haste; his voice grows hoarse and breaks and quavers; his face grows suddenly angular and unsightly. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen. The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence. Yet it is at this very age when in his heart of hearts a young lad most craves for recognition and love; and he becomes the devoted slave of any one who shows him consideration. But none dare openly love him, for that would be regarded as undue indulgence, and therefore bad for the boy. So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a stray dog that has lost his master. Tagore distills the awkwardness and the promise of adolescence into two short paragraphs better than I’ve read anywhere else since. But I did not fully appreciate Tagore’s brilliance in his full oeuvre until college. The hardened cynic used to be idealistic and naïve; full of hope but unsure of the future; perceptive but impractical; and ready to rush headlong toward the pain of hopeless love. Tagore’s songs defined my joy and my sorrows –the physical seasons and the emotional ones. I have danced to a campfire singing out of tune to his lines: আমার স্বপ্ন ঘিরে নাচে মাতাল জুটে–যত মাতাল জুটে।যা না চাইবার তাই আজি চাই গো,যা না পাইবার তাই কোথা পাই গো।পাব না, পাবনা,মরি অসম্ভবের পায়ে মাথা কুটে। In my dreams dance drunk fellows –A bunch of drunkardsWhat should not be desired is what I desire today!What will never be found, where will I found it?I won’t get it, I won’t get itGroveling at the feet of the impossible A few lines from one of his songs perfectly describe my life’s philosophy in better words that I could ever imagine possible: যে বাতাস নেয় ফুলের গন্ধ, ভুলে যায় দিনশেষে,তার হাতে দিই আমার ছন্দ–কোথা যায় কে জানে সে।লক্ষ্যবিহীন স্রোতের ধারায় জেনো জেনো মোর সকলই হারায়,চিরদিন আমি পথের নেশায় পাথেয় করেছি হেলা।। The breeze which carries the fragrance of flowers forgets by day’s endInto its hands, I offer my pulse – who knows which way it will go?Know this: in the aimless flow of currents, I’m losing everythingAlways, for the thrill of the journey, I’ve ignored the price of passage I have cried to his songs. When my grandmother, who loved me more than she loved anyone else, died, I listened to his songs. When I finished my doctoral dissertation, I dedicated the volume to her with the following line from a Tagore song: “তুমি জাননা আমি তোমারে পেয়েছি অজানা সাধনে” -You don’t know, I’ve discovered you through an unknown quest. But most of all, I have known love and loved my world through his words. So, is Tagore still relevant today? The noted post-Tagore Bengali poet Bishnu Dey opened one of his poems with the lamentation that we had reduced him to celebrations on specific days of the year – in essence making him irrelevant in the unkindest manner possible: তুমি কি কেবলই স্মৃতি / শুধু এক উপলক্ষ কবি?Are you simply a memory, just an excuse, poet? Tagore’s own poem which prompted the stylistic response from Dey is worth noting as an answer to the question: তুমি কি কেবলই ছবি, শুধু পটে লিখা।ওই-যে সুদূর নীহারিকাযারা করে আছে ভিড় আকাশের নীড়,ওই যারা দিনরাত্রিআলো হাতে চলিয়াছে আঁধারের যাত্রী গ্রহ তারা রবি,তুমি কি তাদের মত সত্য নও।হায় ছবি, তুমি শুধু ছবি।।নয়নসমুখে তুমি নাই,নয়নের মাঝখানে নিয়েছ যে ঠাঁই– আজি তাইশ্যামলে শ্যামল তুমি, নীলিমায় নীল।আমার নিখিল তোমাতে পেয়েছে তার অন্তরের মিল।নাহি জানি, কেহ নাহি জানে–তব সুর বাজে মোর গানে,কবির অন্তরে তুমি কবি–নও ছবি, নও ছবি, নও শুধু ছবি।। Are you simply an image, only lines on a canvas?Like those distant galaxies which crowd the night sky?Like the planets, stars, and the sun–Travelers transporting light through complete darkness–Are you as unreal as they are?Alas, image, you’re only an image! You have no presence in front of my eyesYou’ve taken your seat deep inside my eyes –that is whyYou’re the blue within the blue, the green inside the greenIn my completeness, I have found I am identical to youI don’t know: no one understands-Your tune resonates in my songs,You’re the poet within this poet –Not an image, not an image, not only an image!

[thakur is actually a bangla word (as far as i'm concerned) means someone like saint or other prestigious person.it actualy title of a family.] thanks.

Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) Our sincere homage to this great philosopher ,poet,writer ,nature lover & the composer of national anthem of Bharat on his 72 nd death anniversary ! His immortal spirit is very well expressed through this poem from his "Gitanjali" :- Journey HomeThe time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued myvoyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!'The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousandstreams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!' Thanks to :- Sayantan Mukherji - for the reminder/request http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore http://www.schoolofwisdom.com/history/teachers/rabindranath-tagore/gitanjali/

Vast changes have occurred in the world in the seventy years since Tagore’s death in 1941. Many of these changes have been profound in their impact. On the positive side, there has been an unimaginable rise in incomes in Asia, particularly in China and India. Economic growth has been fast and sustained also in the West, accompanied by a surge in foreign trade after the adoption of GATT and WTO treaties. Western Europe reconstructed rapidly after the Second World War, and has now become a peaceful, borderless, and prosperous union. The world as a whole has become a ‘flat earth’ due to technological advances in communications and transport. On the negative side, hundreds of millions still live in extreme poverty in Africa and in pockets of Asia and Latin America. Economic growth has hardly reached them, and their development indicators of literacy, life expectancy and child mortality remain very low. Disparities among nations, and within nations, continue to be great. The spread of democracy and human rights have been uneven. Environmental degradation, climate change, and international terrorism have emerged as major concerns. The current economic recession and financial crises around the world, and the continuing problems of religious polarization, militarism and hostilities, have led the leading countries to review the architecture of the world order. We may be at the threshold of a new world order which will govern the next hundred years. It may be appropriate at this time to look back at some of the Modern Greats of the past century and re-examine their messages of wisdom for their relevance today. This paper will attempt to do so with Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who was a leading spokesman for compassionate humanism and culture inIndia and the world. Tagore lived in the age of science, as we also do. He was proud of the age of science as we also are. But we cannot say our lives are universally more secure or healthy in these times of advanced science and technology than that of our ancestors in the preceding age. That leads us to ask why this insecurity, why all this terror, why our so-called modern society has led to progressively less harmony between the individual and the society. Even while Tagore greatly appreciated the benefits of science, and made use of science for rural reform which we shall discuss below, he understood that it is not enough by itself, and that our hopes and aspirations must be founded on a universalist and democratic framework. That brings us to his thoughts on humanism, education and culture, nationalism and internationalism, and their great relevance today. II. Humanism, nationalism, internationalism “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards each other in a spirit of brotherhood.” Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations, 1948. Long before the League of Nations and the United Nations, Tagore was an internationalist who critiqued the narrowly defined concepts of nationalism and patriotism. He wanted all human beings to be treated equally regardless of the country or nation to which they belonged. He also did not want barriers between people even within the same nation—the barriers of caste, race, and religion. Tagore lived and worked during a period of crucial social and political transformation in India. He responded to its intense moments in memorable words. A product of the nineteenth century, he was profoundly influenced by its liberal humanistic thought and its hope and optimism. He contributed substantially to the making of a modern India. By his own admission his formative influences were from a confluence of three movements which were active in the India of his time: the protestant religious movement of Rammohan Roy (1772-1833), the literary movement of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-94), and the national movement. ‘It [the national movement] was not fully political but it began to give voice to the mind of our people trying to assert their own personality’, he wrote. The ‘national movement’ revived the Indian pride in its past achievement in philosophy and religion, art and architecture, music and poetry. Pride in his own cultural traditions did not however blind Tagore to the moral and social degradation of his country which he directly experienced. Even in his eulogies of India he was remarkably free from the rhetoric of patriotism. He responded to European literature with a keen mind and great enthusiasm. The first forty years of his life was conspicuous by his fond attraction for the Romantic and the Victorian poets, and Shakespeare, matched equally by his passionate love for Sanskrit literature in general and for the classical Sanskrit writer Kalidasa in particular. This catholicity of taste slowly evolved into his deep and pervasive sense of the ‘universal’ in thought and culture. Like all the leading intellectuals of his time, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) and Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) in particular, Tagore also was obliged to address the question of the relation between India and the West. Like his compatriots he began by believing in an essential dichotomy between the two cultures and, for a certain period of time, he talked of a spiritual East and the materialistic West. But there was an evolution in his understanding when he discovered for himself a spirituality in Western civilisation too. He located this spirituality in the West’s dynamism and experimentation and its continuous pursuit of truth. Equally, he observed and critiqued the West’s arrogant display of power but believed that it clashed with her ‘inner ideal’. This criticism led to his controversial lectures on Nationalism in 1916 where he argued that the West’s tremendous success in science and technology had led to dehumanization and an increasing greed for power. Despite such scathing criticisms Tagore remained a pioneer of the intellectual union of East and West. There again he put his faith in people and not in governments. He believed that despite the West’s ruthless politics, there was no absence of martyrs in the West who sacrificed their lives for the wrongs done by their governments. That is how he sought to turn our minds towards the ideal of the spiritual unity of man. He wrote, ‘In India what is needed more than anything else is the broad mind which, only because it is conscious of its own vigorous individuality, is not afraid of accepting truth from all sources’. It is not uncommon for a person to believe in the equality of all men, and yet to regard his or her own country in an exclusionist sense. However, Tagore’s strong faith in man led him to an inclusive approach. He was able to shake off all shackles of traditional Hinduism, and arrive at a non-parochial and inclusive concept of India. This was in a sense a rediscovery of the concept first presented by Rammohan Roy in 1823, but Tagore established it, rooted it in Indian history, and propagated it throughout the country. The history of India had a special message for Tagore. He saw it not so much as a synthesis, as is generally said, but as a ‘mixture of ideas’ and an ‘interpenetration of opposites’. To him it was not the history of Aryans and non-Aryans, not the history of Hindus, nor a history of Hindus and Muslims taken together. He did not see the coming of the British as an accidental intrusion. His essays written during 1898 and 1904 convey an intuitive sense of history. He distanced himself as much from the colonialist historiography as he did from a Hindu nationalist view of the past. His country’s social civilization, he wrote, was founded on ‘an adjustment of races, to acknowledge real differences between them, and yet to seek some basis of unity …’ His inclusive nationalism and non-parochial interpretation of India’s history became a powerful agent of ideas for the freedom movement that Gandhi and Nehru led between the two world wars. The idea of India expressed so eloquently by Nehru in 1947, was quite in conformity with Tagore’s idea of India, which the Indian nation has cherished ever since. To quote from Nehru’s famous speech on August 14, 1947: “…what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman……………….All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.” Several factors contributed to Tagore’s inclusive approach, which was so strongly championed by Nehru. First, his father was a leading reformer of the Hindu society and religion, adopting the monotheistic Vedic variant introduced by Rammohan Roy at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Thus Tagore grew up in a household in which the spirit of scrutiny, creativity, and reforms dominated. Second, his exposure beginning in 1892, to the great poverty and indignities suffered by the Muslim peasantry in his family’s agricultural estates, as well as his friendship with Christians like Sister Nivedita (1867-1911), Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya (1861-1907), Rewachand (1868-1945), also some years later Charles Andrews (1871-1940) and William Pearson (1881-1923), convinced him that they rightfully belong to the same brotherhood of man. He wrote, ‘On us today is thrown the responsibility of building up a greater India in which Hindu and Muslim and Christian will find their place’. This reasoning found expression in his well-known poem in 1911, beginning with the lines, He mor chitta, punya tirthe jagore dhire ei bharater maha-manaber sagoro-tire. ‘On the sacred shores of the ocean of humanity of thisIndia, Awaken, my heart!’ Tagore’s song ‘jana gana mana adhinayaka’ (1911) invoking the same goal of a larger humanity was chosen as our national anthem by Gandhi and Nehru, and remains a symbol of modern India’s legacy of universal humanity. The Constitution of India upholds that legacy. III. Education “To accept the truth of our own age it will be necessary to establish a new education on the basis, not of nationalism, but of a wider relationship of humanity”. Rabindranath Tagore, Visva-Bharati, 1919, pp. 9-10. (Translated by UDG). When first formulating his ideas for a new Indian education, Tagore was clearly responding to the ‘cultural dislocation’ of a colonised country. His mind was filled with what he wrote in his essay Tapoban in 1909 (in English translation ‘The Message of the Forest’, 1919): ‘The forest, unlike the desert or rock or sea, is living; it gives shelter and nourishment to life. In such surroundings the ancient forest-dwellers of India realised the spirit of harmony with the universe and emphasized in their minds the monistic aspects of truth. They sought the realisation of their soul through union with all’. He wrote poetically of how ‘the voice in the Vedic tongue’ guided him to the idea of a Brahmacharya Ashram or a hermitage when starting his school in Santiniketan. But he was soon to decide that a Brahmacharya Ashram was not his notion of a new and modern education. He valued some of its features such as following a life of simplicity for the students and teachers of the school alike. He also greatly valued the need for a forest, or a tapoban-like place, which, in his plan for the Santiniketan school, was to be a quiet rural environment surrounded by nature and away from the confines of a city. He knew that was the closest he could get to establishing an intimate community of teachers and students as in the hermitages of the past. But his ideal school had to be much more than that, especially with regard to opening up the students’ minds to a relationship with the world. Almost as soon as the Brahmacharya Ashram began to function he spoke out his disapproval of the institution in the following words, ‘I have no desire to magically resurrect some ancient dead thing. It is not my business to bring back the past. I want to work for something which though implicit is yet strongly current, that which is not dead and which is natural to India. The projects we start fail because we blindly try to get along without acknowledging it ... to say that it is possible to resurrect India’s past but not possible to integrate another country’s historical time with India’s, and to attempt to implement this, is vain and leads to destruction, not to new life’. He opened up his Santiniketan school to those who believed in East and West alike, in peace and goodwill, without distinction of caste and creed and away from nationalist politics. Tagore was a strong critic of theBritish Empire but he did not want that to get in the way of his mission to break out of the isolation that colonial rule and militant nationalism imposed. He argued that the lessons of the First World War proved that ‘tomorrow’s history’ must begin with a chapter on ‘internationalism’ and that education must be in harmony with the times. In his 1919 essay A Centre of Indian Culture, he raised the crucial question of what must be the religious teaching given at such a centre? He pointed out how ‘India’ or ‘national’ tended to be identified with ‘Hindu’ which he argued was limited to only one historical aspect of India. He deplored the fact thatIndia was divided by religious and social barriers and asked, ‘Can there be no wide meeting place where all sects may gather together and forget their differences’? This fundamental question became even more urgent with the bitter lessons of the First World War when he began to proceed gradually to transform Santiniketan into a world university to which scholars from the East and West would be invited to meet and study each other’s cultures. He named this university ‘Visva-Bharati’ and chose an excerpt from a Vedic text as its motto when inaugurating the institution in 1921: Yatra visvam bhavati ekanidam ‘where the whole world forms its one single nest’ In the midst of an unprecedented political unrest and excitement, and against the whole force of the popular sentiment for the Non-cooperation Movement, he stated his views with passion in two essays, ‘Satyer Abahan’(1921, The Call of Truth) and ‘Sikshar Milan’ (1921, The Union of Cultures). Those essays stated his goal of bringing the West on terms of equality to the India of his aspiration --- which for him had to be anIndia of multiple cultures, an India where the impoverished village is given education and dignity of life, an India building its strength and nationhood by uniting castes and communities under an enlightened leadership. He recognized that the colonial education system was out of touch with Indian life. This was why he pressed for an education to first understand this weakness, and then endeavour to bridge the gap by working for village reorganization as an essential part of a ‘new’ education based on self-reliance and human dignity. He wanted this education to combine local or indigenous knowledge with modern scientific know-how from which both sections of Indian society could learn and make progress. Visva-Bharati’s ‘mission of rural construction’, he wrote, was to ‘retard’ the process of ‘racial suicide’. He held firmly that organizing the villages would be the right way to spread ‘national consciousness’. He argued that ‘national unity’ could become a reality only when the masses get a gut feeling about it, and that could happen if the educated classes and the masses unite in a common programme of work. Such was the ‘sacrifice’ needed, he wrote, to make the country ‘our own’. He criticized the Indian National Congress for looking to our alien government to do the work that had to be done ‘by us’ for the country that was ‘our own’. He knew squarely we were faced with two stupendous problems: first, the poverty of our intellectual life and, second, the poverty of our material life. The Santiniketan-Sriniketan institution or Visva-Bharati – a world university in rural Bengal – became his life-long activity to build a centre of cultures which would not only be a centre of intellectual life in India but also a centre of her economic life. He wrote, ‘Our education should be in full touch with our complete life, economic, intellectual, aesthetic, social, and spiritual; and our educational institutions should be the very heart of our society. It must cultivate land, breed cattle, weave cloth, and produce the necessities of life, calling science to its aid, and uniting teachers and students in productive activities on cooperative principles whose motive force is not the greed of profit’. At the start this programme was limited to three villages in the south-west of Santiniketan where his school for urban boys and girls was established in 1901. With the problems of over three hundred million people staring him at the face, Tagore could only have hoped that his efforts would touch the hearts of his village neighbours at Santiniketan and would help them reassert themselves in a bolder social order. ‘I alone cannot take responsibility for the whole of India’, he wrote. ‘But even if two or three villages can be freed from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance, an ideal for the whole of India would be established. These two or three villages must be liberated fully; all must have education; there must be joy in these villages with songs and readings as in the past’. These ideas of a new education were founded upon an urge and an instinct to create a new type of humanity whose scientific-technological progress and economic development would grow through dialogue and respect for values. That was the persistent basis of Tagore’s debate onIndia and the world in his powerful and spirited writings on education, culture, science, nationalism, internationalism. These give meaning to his stand against colonialism, discrimination and dehumanization. They give coherence to his faith in the relationship between human beings and their environment. All of his arguments were drawn directly from his life experience of the social and natural environment in which he lived a hundred fifty years ago, and we still do today. His 1919 essay City and Village says it all. IV. National Policy, Society and Values “Nehru’s pan-Asianism and his determination to stay ‘non-aligned’ in the Cold War …………bear the mark of Tagore’s thought.” Ramachandra Guha, The Hindu, November 23, 2008 India’s history after Independence is a complex story with far-reaching ramifications across all aspects of its society. But the two most prominent features of its personality in the early years were its foreign policy and its approach to economic development. Nehru’s famous foreign policy of ‘non-alignment’ sought to avoid taking sides in the Cold War. This gave India freedom to choose, and to reason things out before making commitments on the basis of short-term expediency alone. India had also hoped to bring about greater harmony and moderation in world affairs, and to project an image that suited the reemergence of a compassionate and wise civilization. This was very much in line with Tagore’s philosophy and understanding of history. If Nehru or Krishna Menon sounded too high-minded at times, it was an echo of what Tagore’s audiences must have felt during his lectures on nationalism in USA and Japan in 1916. India’s approach to economic development began with planning. At its simplest, planning is simply a tool for understanding the possibilities and prospects of the economy. It was seen as a useful way of organizing statistics on the economy, about which the new leaders had little organized knowledge. But the government also adopted a highly interventionist policy, characterised by extensive controls at all levels (this regime of controls became popularly known as the "Control Raj"). Along with that, the government adopted an ‘inward-looking’ or insular policy behind high tariff barriers and quotas. It was only after 1991, that India started to moderate or reverse these policies The extensive controls and state ownership that accompanied insular policies, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, would certainly have been deplored by Tagore. They would not have appealed to his sense offreedom nor survived his penchant for reasoning. This is apparent from his observations on the Soviet Union in 1930, although he did appreciate Soviet achievements in the field of education. A market-oriented outlook, in contrast to the "Control Raj", is also expected from a man of his background. Since the early days of his ancestor Nilmoni (d.1793), the fortunes of the Tagores were linked to trade-related businesses with the British. Tagore’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore (1794-1846), was a hugely successful entrepreneur and the first independent merchant of the British Raj. As an internationalist, Tagore surely would have preferred open trade policies. For example, he always opposed boycotts of foreign goods whenever such proposals came up, whether from Gandhi or from others. He would have also opposed barriers to cultural integration. He would have welcomed globalization among different cultures and languages, and he would have been wary of protecting national cultures by excluding foreign cultures. Gandhi’s advocacy of the household spinning wheel, or Charka, did not make sense to him at all, as he felt it would not be economic. This was later confirmed to be so by Amartya Sen in his Ph.D. thesis. Once again, Tagore’s position revealed his instinctive distrust of ad hoc exhortations for political gain. Because of that instinct and because of his strong feelings about secularism, he also would have been concerned about the ad hocintroduction of parochial personal laws which vitiate the Indian Constitution. He would have questioned the Directives on special treatments for Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes, which enhance discrimination among Hindus, and also among Hindus and non-Hindus. These policies were meant to be short-term expedients, but they have become permanent anomalies in Indian political and social life. Tagore was an early environmentalist with a strong sense of aesthetics, who adored wide-open spaces and the riverine areas of Bengal. He disliked smoke-stacked industry and other ugly and noisy aspects of urban life. He felt that mechanization and assembly-line production would strip away freedom and dignity from human beings; this was the theme of his powerful play, Rakta Karabi (1923). Throughout his life he was a passionate champion of women’s rights and empowerment, like Rammohan Roy and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820-91) before him. The first story he ever wrote, Bhikharini, was all about the misfortunes and abuses that a mother and her daughter had to suffer. He was only 16 at the time when he wrote this. His school in Santiniketan was coeducational, which was a major break from accepted social norms. And the characters of women protagonists he developed in one novel after another were an early expression of the empowerment of women we see in our national life today. The poverty that Tagore encountered in the country-side in Bengal in late nineteenth century could not have been less dire than the poverty of the serfs in Czarist Russia, which had so moved Chekov and Tolstoy. His approach to dealing with poverty was through the spread of basic education with the goal of self-reliance, the application of science and technology to agriculture, the provision of cooperative credit, and the setting up of cottage industries. Most important of all in Tagore’s scheme of things was to establish a relationship with the village based on a genuine attempt to understand its problems, whether in every instance successful or not. Some important results were obtained from the Sriniketan experiment. Health work in the villages reduced the number of deaths from epidemic over a period of time. Rotation of crops helped the growth of agricultural productivity. A large number of villagers obtained employment in the industries department, albeit assisted by the requirements of the Second World War. The long term effect of the Sriniketan enterprise was seen in the full flowering of the rural development strategies in post-independent India through the government’s Block Development Schemes, its Community Project and its Cottage Industries movement. The things that would have most disappointed Tagore about the developments after Independence are first, the failure to provide basic education and health care to the underprivileged. Tagore would have accepted the lead of the government in this area, as in China, Vietnam and other countries which have rapidly reached high literacy levels. The elimination of social backwardness and poverty would have been very high on his agenda were he alive today. The second area which would have disturbed him greatly would have been the rise of sectarianism and the politics behind animosities toward, and occasional hostilities against, religious minorities. Thirdly, he would not have endorsed modes of political dissent which bypass the Constitution and lead to anarchy. Methods of opposition which may arguably have been acceptable under the colonial rule of Britain would not have been acceptable to him under the democratic framework after Independence. Like Tagore we also live in the age of science and internationalism. Today we call it globalization, and our education is still similar to Western-style colonialist education. Given how troubled our world is becoming, there is a growing awareness of the need to reconcile the values of ‘universal’ and ‘diversity’, a conviction that Tagore pioneered not only in thought but also in his life of action. There was not a great deal he or any one individual could do to bring change to an unequal and unjust world. But he was never indifferent to the need, and he tried hard to make a difference with whatever constructive work was possible for him. We can try to make that his legacy in our individual lives.

Netaji was coronated by TAGORE as "Deshanayak" Once, the great Rabindranath Tagore is accredited in May, 1939 to have been surmised by the qualities of the Netaji on his path to higher trajectory in the freedom struggle and famously said: "A suicidal mania seems to be prevalent in our society that takes a peculiar pleasure in sapping the strength of the country by insidious dealings and all this at a time when it should be our duty to justify our existence before the doubting gaze of the world. Wearied by the concerted conspiracy of sinister forces both outside and within, we are increasingly losing the vital power to resist them and recover from their attack." "At such a juncture of nationwide crisis, we require the service of a forceful personality, the invincible faith of a natural born leader, who can defy the adverse fate that threatens our progress." "Subhas Chandra, I have watched the dawn that witnessed the beginning of your political Sadhana.. "Today you are revealed in the pure light of midday sun which does not admit of apprehensions.. As I feel that you come with an errand to usher a new light of hope in our motherland, I ask you to take up the task of leader of Bengal and ask my countrymen to make it true."

Today is the Chinese new year to know more visit here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

This group is for Tagore Lovers, but Anand is also Indian this is a great interview which I think all chess lovers couldn't miss so I decided to share. This is one of the best interview conduct on Viswanathan Anand. Very well done and layout. Enjoy! http://www.whychess.org/node/3582

On the 27th of December this year, it will be exactly 100 years since the day our national anthem was first sung in some offical capacity. http://www.heartthoughts.net/jana-gana-mana-celebrates-100-years/117/ Another feather in the cap of the gret artist.

Mind Without Fear Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken upinto fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reasonhas not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. ....from "Gitanjali " by Rabindranath Tagor

These are the live shootings of Guru Rabindranath Tagore :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UQrstIEqbQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pypwkCIvCZs&feature=related

In this video ,it is said that this is a voice recording of Guru Rabindranath Tagore ! I don't know whether it is from authentic source or not ,but found it worth sharing ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsQuZ8m7YPQ&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Tagore used to say humourously that his childhood was under 'bhruthyocrasy' means servant's rule.He says:It was Brajeswhwar who was the leader of servants and his main assistant was Shyam.He was from Jessor.He was a rustic fellow speaking a dialect which was alien to Calcutta.for 'thenara' he would say 'thara' and 'ora' for 'onara'........he used to call us 'domani' with love.He was good............. thus goes the stories of his childhood ...all those words reveal the great great poet was inside him from the very beginning of his lifetime.

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee! He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

hi, thanks for the invition to join your group, a bit to old in the teeth to call myself a lover, but i can still bite hence my call sign wolf30. best wishes david

PURITY Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs. I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind. I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart. And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing itis thy power gives me strength to act.